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Polymyalgia Rheumatica (PMR) | Last Active: Mar 2 10:21am | Replies (119)
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@dadcue thank you for your response!! I think I’ll just ride w/3 mgs for a bit & see what happens.
( I’m not certain when I should try to go to 2.5 in the future then. When I’m not in pain at 3 mgs? )
Replies to "@dadcue thank you for your response!! I think I’ll just ride w/3 mgs for a bit..."
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@kare1
I asked a similar question when an endocrinologist told me to stay on 3 mg of prednisone. The context was how long would it take for my cortisol level to improve? The only answer I received from the endocrinologist was, "as long as it takes!"
Everything I read about how long it takes for the adrenals to recover from long term treatment with prednisone is that it is proportional to the dose and duration of treatment with prednisone. The higher the dose and the longer the duration --- it will take longer for the adrenals to recover and resume their normal production of cortisol.
This was all studied a long time ago. I don't know how scientific everyone is but the following abstract from 1970 might give people the general idea.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4321238/
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It has been more than 50 years but I don't think anything has changed. I took prednisone daily for 12 long years until an alternative to prednisone was tried and I miraculously tapered off Prednisone.
The other factor is how long does PMR last. Nobody can answer that question with any degree of precision when we are treated with prednisone. The future looks brighter with biologics that induce a sustained remission faster so we don't need Prednisone as long.